Legislative leaders unveil "millionaire's tax" to fund schools, health care and public defense

House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon and Senate Majority Leader Jamie Peterson on Tuesday announced a newly filed proposal to impose an income tax on very high earners in Washington, saying the change is intended to reduce reliance on sales and business-and-occupation (B&O) taxes and to generate revenue for education, health care and public safety.

Fitzgibbon said he and Peterson filed the bill the day before and that the text is available online. "We see this as a really, remarkable opportunity for us to reduce our reliance on the taxes that we have relied on for over 90 years," he said, citing the burden sales tax places on low- and middle-income households and calling the B&O tax "inefficient" and riddled with exemptions.

Peterson framed the proposal as a corrective to what he called an "upside-down" tax system and tied the effort to recent federal tax changes. "We have a generational opportunity in front of us to change that trajectory and to make the whole system fairer," he said, adding that the introduced draft is a starting point and will…